Anthony Marr's CARE-7 tour blog #8 - 21 Apr 2010

Southern California

A busy few days:

April 17, Saturday, 4 pm, I gave an 80-minute speech at the Animal
Liberation Forum, followed by a 20-minute discussion session. Again, I asked
the 70-people audience if they had heard of the term "Latent Heat". Again,
not a single hand came up.

But they know now, and the talk probably transformed the outlook of the
entire audience.

My MS friend Cathy Garneau was there, whom I met for the first time - a
very sweet lady

and talented artist.

Paul Fusch came in mid-speech. was held up by traffic and could not
attend. Admittedly, I was disappointed and a little upset, but soon, my "zen"
took over, and I was happy again. In any case, we all got together for a
party at Coby's place afterward, and a good time was had by all.

We took some "naughty" pics of Anthony D. and Paul F. simultaneously
kissing Marla's cheek,

and we all had a good laugh, joking that we should post it on the
internet so that our detractors could blast us for having an "orgy". LOL

April 18, Sunday, 2 pm, vegan potluck at Coby's place. Just a small
gathering, but a few old friends came by, including Janet Allen, now called
Chicana, whom I've known since 2004. She and I will be going to the David
Rubin potluck the next day. A notably person who came in late was Monique
Lukens, a young woman with amazing intensity who began with contributing
ideas as to how our next funeral for the animals events should be conducted,
including dumpster diving for animal bones for the ceremony. After a while,
I turned to talking about hunting, and she was flabbergasted by what I
revealed. She stayed the entire evening and to work on an email to the
organizer of a luncheon with Ed Asner on April 21, Wednesday, suggesting to
the organizer that since Asner was a vegetarian, that the venue should be a
veg restaurant, instead of the Eclectic Restaurant whose menu was full for
meat dishes. I let her use my laptop,

and since I then could not use it, I went to Coby's piano. When I played
the theme of Gone With the Wind, Monique loved it, and asked me to play it
over again. After midnight, she did a short interview with me on her
recorder for her new radio program. It took us about 7 takes to get it done.
By then it was 2 a.m., and I walked her out to her car.

April 19, Monday, 6:30 pm, vegan potluck at David Rubin's place. About a
dozen people present, including Armaiti May who introed my talk, Janet
Allen, Bob Linden, Coby's daughter Noor, Julie Leibovitz, James Claire
Lewis, and Plinio J. Garcia of JGreen Natural Foods Inc, who asked me to
email him for him to send in a donation, among others.

It was a vegan group, so I started on that track, but did move on to
hunting and global warming and again, no one had heard of "Latent Heat". The
Q&A was concentrated on saving the planet from Runaway Global Heating.
Plinio started by talking about converting the world to veganism "one plate
at a time", but after a bit, he began to say that that would be too slow,
and that I had given him a sense of urgency not there before. All were in a
state of harmony in the discussion, but the gent from India criticized me
for calling the hunters "serial killers", saying that I should not attack
people but to sweet-talk to them. My retort was that of everybody in the
room, he was the only person who attacked me, drawing a roomful of laughter.
LOL

April 20, Tuesday: A rest day, but no rest for me. Monique called in the
morning giving Coby the good news that she could bring a guest to the Asner
luncheon, and asked Coby to go. Coby deferred to me, and wrote back to
Monique, who called me later to invite me to be her guest. So, I spent the
whole rest of the day writing a letter to Mr. Asner, which was still
unfinished by night fall.

April 21, Wednesday: This was a sad day for the AR movement. The U.S.
Supreme Court struck down the law that bans videos portraying cruelty to
animals, which left crush videos and dog-fighting videos in limbo, sending
the whole AR movement into an uproar and a tail-spin, centered upon
anti-crush. This is a clear case of hunters grouping their hunting videos
and the crush videos together so that, in order to protect the legality of
the hunting videos, they are defending the crush videos - how contemptibly
despicable.

I spent the morning finishing my letter to Mr. Asner, animal advocate,
age 80. But 11:00, it was done.

I packed up, went to the nearest Office Depot to get it printed out, and
arrived at the Eclectic Restaurant on time, with the letter sandwiched
between the pages of my second book [Homo Sapiens! SAVE YOUR EARTH!]. When
settled, there were about 20 guests seated at a long table, with Mr. Asner
at the head.

After the lunch, he came down to our end of the table to chat with us. I
found him very personable, humble. genuine and approachable. In a momentary
lull, I stood up at the tail end of the table and asked loudly, "Mr. Asner,
do you have any influence over the Supreme Court or the Congress?" He
laughed, and his answer showed that he was already keenly aware of what
happened this morning. I presented my book and letter to him.

Monique loved him, and he seemed very fond of her. They talked for quite
a while.

Towards the end of the luncheon, we took our group picture, and then, Mr.
Asner called out, "Where is my book? Where is my book?!" meaning [Homo
Sapiens! SAVE YOUR EARTH!]!!! Apparently, when he change seats, he had left
it at the previous seat. Someone found it and brought it to him. He hugged
it. I am so gratified!

When I was walking Monique back to her car, she said how happy she was
that I went with her. "It was meant to be," she said.

Later this evening, Marla told us that the Congress is tabling a bill to
ban crush videos, while stressing that hunting videos are to be forever
unassailable. This is another case of hunter manipulation, except, now,
perhaps due to the fury generated in the AR movement, they have separated
the hunting videos from the crush videos, to allow banning the latter while
iron-casting the former. How elementary, Watson! My new strategy, therefore,
is to use the hideous hunting videos as weapons to destroy hunting.